How Did I Get Here? (From the Primordial Soup)

Review of recent speculations about the origins of protein translation.

DNA may be the biological master code, but proteins are the soul of the machine- the shakers and makers that do everything, or almost everything, around a cell. Given how different these chemicals are in their roles and nature, how did they arise in evolution, and come to the indirect but essential relationship they have today? That is the story of translation and the origin of life. One of the exceptions to the current ubiquity of proteins in active roles is the ribosome- seat of protein synthesis- whose catalytic core is RNA throughout. Indeed the only molecule that can do it all- code for information, survive for reasonable lengths of time, (at least under acidic conditions), and do catalytic reactions, is RNA. This has led to a rough consensus that the very beginnings of chemical reproduction and life-ish chemistry began with an "RNA world". This does not exclude other chemicals, like amino acids and membrane-like lipids participating, but they would not be active in the central reproductive and coding operations that characterize life.

Envisioning the addition of DNA is easy. DNA is similar enough to RNA that there are only a couple of alterations needed to make this far more durable form. Copying is also similar enough to whatever mechanism RNA had to copy itself that the transition between the two is relatively straightforward to envision. And of course, RNA remains the universal carrier of transitory codes- between the durable DNA store and the translation system.

The modern flow of biological information: DNA->RNA->protein.

But getting from the RNA world to the protein world of today remains very hard to envision. There has been quite a bit of recent speculation on the matter, presenting several divergent stories for how this key transition came about. It is an interesting time to take a look at the field, even though it is possible that we may never have a definitive, or even consensus, answer.

The first interesting point to make is that copying RNA is intrinsically a perilous and questionable practice. We naturally think of nucleic acid copying with the model of DNA in mind: making the reverse complement by zipper-like Watson-Crick base pairing. This is the strongest form of nucleic acid interaction, and it takes helicases or other energy typically to pry the resulting duplex nucleic acid pair apart. The product of this reaction is also only a reverse complement, not a precise copy of the original. To copy a functional ribozyme, a second reverse complement would be needed to come up with a true copy of the original. This leads several authors to speculate about "direct" RNA copying systems, where the reverse complement is avoided, thereby sparing the system from these two perils, the first of which is actually the more serious. Reverse complementary sequences form a black hole of stable pairing, from which their originators would have a very difficult time extricating themselves under pre-biotic conditions.

One author (Taylor) proposes an obscure set of base pairing bonds, less strong than the Watson-Crick base pairs, that might form a basis for direct instead of reverse copying. This is highly speculative, and such effective pairing is not shown explicitly in the model, or elsewhere to my knowledge. Thankfully, this property plays no role in his model, which goes on to draw on tRNAs as models for an RNA-based adapter that might have originally brought their nucleotide ends to a ribozyme to carry out this parallel replication into direct RNA copies. This naturally leads to an evolution into carrying amino acids, and the replicative ribozyme transforms into a ribosome.

Proposal from Noller for a double-bridging system for RNA replication that uses a minimal system of adapter RNAs, which are then pre-adapted for later use in ribosomal protein synthesis. 

Another author (Noller) later proposed a similar RNA replication mechanism that produces direct copies at the cost of a similarly non-direct mechanism. In this theory, two identical tRNA-like structures serve as the intermediate bridge between the template and product RNAs in an early RNA replicase, cleverly using short (and normal Watson-Crick) base-pairing interactions to build the copied product RNA, triplet by triplet. Again, the proposal of an indirect (not zippering basepair-mediated) mechanism solves the problems of making reverse complement copies and two-stage copying, at the cost of substantial complexity. But it also obviously lays the foundation of the future ribosome, which uses a similarly indirect (tRNA) means to bring amino acids together bit by bit as directed by a coding RNA template.

Not so fast, claims another group (Harish and Caetano-Anolles). They do an exhaustive analysis of the phylogenetic history of all the RNA and protein components of the ribosome, and come to the somewhat startling conclusion that proteins were there from the very start, co-evolving with the ribosomal core and playing roles in the origin of translation. They allude to non-ribosomal peptide synthesis as a possible source for the early portions of this partnership, which seems under-developed. Phylogenetic analysis is notoriously murky at these early times, especially using RNA sequences, and can be confused with conserved functionality. Perhaps most pursuasive, however, is their specific set of findings that various protein and RNA portions of the ribosome each have, as one would expect, a variety of different ages, and that the oldest protein portion is in contact with the oldest RNA portion, at the mRNA decoding and ratcheting region. This implies not only that proteins were very early partners in whatever this ribozyme was at the time, but also that the peptidyl transfer center, previously thought to be the most ancient heart of the ribosome, only came later. They suggest that this complex was at the time an RNA replicase, but avoid saying much about it.

This raises more insistent questions about how useful, large, and ultimately conserved proteins could be devised at a time before the ribosome arrived, and also, if proteins were present, why weren't their superior catalytic capabilities used to engineer the (later-arriving) peptidyl transferase site, instead of the RNA-based mechanism that still exists?

Lastly, a fourth proposal (Ma) takes another approach to the bridging RNA system, proposing that small RNAs were capable of binding amino acids from very early times, and could have been used for a primitive form of templated protein synthesis. Indeed, they may have started out as RNA-bound co-factors for special ribozyme reactions, rather than as units for peptide synthesis at all. But the amino acid carriers then became standardized, and once they exposed an anticodon, could be harnessed into templated protein synthesis, given some energy, perhaps from the "charged" state by which their amino acids were attached. This theory is a tRNA-first class of theory, and leaves a great deal unsaid and unaccounted for, yet has the virtue of simplicity, plus the recognition that amino acids were common in the prebiotic soup, and likely played some kind of important role from early times.

As one can tell, this field is in ferment, with very interesting ideas deployed to explain a momentous transition of which we can see (and feel and experience) the consequences, but have only the most speculative view of its ingredients, key problems, and context. Origin of life research is a little like string theory in that respect, with little hope of experimental validation, premised on a faith that drawing out the consequences of what is known about the world must, (with a little guessing about what is not known), clarify a world that is at its heart remorselessly logical.

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Travels up the Cilium, and Back Down Again

Cilia are far more than wavy arms.  They are key sensory organs for most cells and have complex internal dynamics.

Cilia are the fuzz of Paramecia, and the sweepers of our respiratory system. They can be flagella, but are structurally unrelated to bacterial flagella. They are yet another eukaryotic innovation, bound by a membrane and composed of a microtubule bundle with complex boundary and transport mechanisms to construct themselves and provide unique functions. While some cells have lots of cilia, virtually all eukaryotic cells have at least one, and that one is called the primary cilium. It arises from the microtubule organizing center left over after cell division, which then migrates to the cell surface (via a vesicle intermediate) and grows a new bundle of microtubules pointed outside to create a key sensory organ. Indeed, primary cilia are the eyes, ears and noses of many eukaryotic cells.

Comb jellies move using cilia.

The cilium membrane is kept distinct from the bulk membrane of the cell via a collar or "necklace" of proteins around the base, implying special transport mechanisms for membrane components as well as for the many internal components needed to build and maintain cilia. This allows various signaling molecules to specialize to the cilium, forming a concentrated and specialized sensory platform.

For example, the photoreceptors in our retinas sit inside modified primary cilia, elaborated and evolved from the more primitive sensory system common to all eukaryotic cells. Fat cells have a primary cilium that displays G-protein coupled signal receptors that receive status updates from the body, and are defective in at least one genetic syndrome of obesity. Other genetic syndromes of ciliary function result in developmental defects, kidney disease, diabetes, and cancer.

The primary cilium is a product of the centriole or MTOC previously used in cell division.

A recent paper (review) investigated the intgernal dynamics that makes all this possible, a train system of cargo carriers that travel up and down the microtubule bundles of cilia. The microtubules are oriented in a single direction, minus at the base to plus at the tip. Two classes of motor proteins go in opposite directions, kinesins going up towards the plus end, or anterograde, and dyneins going in opposite fashion, towards the base, or retrograde. How cargoes attach themselves to these motors, and how their transport is regulated, makes up a very interesting field of study.

This paper observed the transit time of transport carrier complexes (IFT) at the tip, before heading back down to the cilium base.

These researchers used a fluorescent technique to look at individual cargoes as they were making this trip. If cargoes are made fluorescent, and then most of them are bleached out by overexposure, then a few remaining ones can be tracked. Their questions were mainly about how long these materials spent at the tip, and how the decision was made to reverse course. The operative acronym here is IFT, for intra-flagellar transport. Multiple cargoes seem to gang up into literal trains, which seems to depend a special coupling mechanism. For example, the authors labeled one of these dedicated transport proteins, called intraflagellar transport 27, or IFT27. They found that it takes about three seconds for this protein to hold up at the tip before being re-organized into a retrograde train. One of the cargoes being carried up the cilium is dynein, the motor required for all the return trips.

Experimental image set, showing time slices (going down). The fluorescent train comes up the cilium (towards the right) a first, then waits around for a couple of seconds at the tip, before dissociated fluorescent components start their return trips (on two different train sets, here) going back towards the left.

On the other hand, kinesin, which powers the trip up the cilium, does not get actively carried back down, but diffuses back, which is ten times slower. The authors suggest that this may be the rate limiting step restricting cilium length, since as the cilium grows, more of the kinesin is clogging its length, and less is available at the base to serve new anterograde trains. but since kinesin is expressed cytoplasm-wide, this is not an entirely compelling speculation.

In contrast to the train protein tracked above, fluorescently labeled kinesin powers its way up the cilium, but then dilly-dallies about, diffusing slowly back down without joining any powered trains.

What regulates all this? The motors and train proteins are nucleotide binders of various sorts, powered by ATP or GTP, so there is ample precedent for fine regulation using such systems. Perhaps just coming to the (+) end of a microtubule fiber sets switches in the kinesin and train proteins, priming them for the return conformation. What turns the dyneins on at the right time, and what regulates cargo attachment/detachment is still a mystery, however. As for cargo proteins like signaling receptors, some are known to have special targeting sequences which let them bind to the vicinity of the ciliary base, where they are transferred to the IFT train system. Others are sent to the primary cilium via the golgi protein sorting and vesicle generation system. If the targeting is high enough in affinity, such receptors can be essentially vacuumed from the rest of the cell and localized entirely to the cilium, thereby explaining the extreme localization/specialization of some signaling pathways and receptors to the primary cilium.

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The Sierra Club as a Religious Organization

Yes, and a good one, too.

The divides in the US have many dimensions, but a significant one is religious. Conservatives crow about their traditional religion- Christianity- and then, bizarrely, vote for Trump. What they really seem to be for is patriarchy and its traditional society-wide hierarchy (based on male-ness, but also on its accessory patriarchal religion and on race). Their model in the South shows that a bare-majority or even minority race can maintain power for decades in an ostensibly democratic society if enough levers of social, political, overt, violent, as well as covert power are used consistently. The movement against Confederate monuments is a watershed in consciousness of the thoroughgoing way the social gestalt of the South has been shaped by its treasonous and revanchist elite.

As far as rural and Southern America are concerned, the bicoastal elite live in another country entirely. In that country, we tend to think we have no narrative, no gestalt at all, but purely a functional this-is-the-way-it-is approach to reality and truth. A committment to reason, science, innovation, good public policy, social justice, etc. But of course, that can not be true. We have a narrative as well, and nothing illustrates it better than the Sierra Club.

This is the home of the shamans of environmentalism- the tree-huggers, whale watchers, and activists, inhabiting a completely different narrative from that of traditional Christianity and patriarchial conservatism. Its roots go deep into paganism and the natural reverence humans have for nature. It is a nature religion, but not animistic. There are no anthropomorphic deities or weird powers. We are the gods, but are fallen, now that we have inherited this awe-ful responsibility of taking care of a world that we have so hopelessly befouled. There is no bearded or other male figure behind the curtain. The Sierra Club conducts pilgrimiges, has its saints, sacred places and its version of the end-times, preaches to its believers, and expounds at every opportunity an ideology of love of and care for nature. It has its fetishes for untrammeled, unspoiled locations, its secret misanthropy, its revelations of human insignificance. And even jihad, if you count GreenPeace in the same sect.

A recent article by Gary Kamiya in the Sierra Club organ makes its religious nature particularly clear:

... Which takes us back to the wilderness within. No matter how refined we may think ourselves, at some level we are all still wild creatures, made up of the same materials as the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, the distant stars. "Wilderness" carries a connotation of chaos and anarchy, but that's misleading. Our inner wilderness is no more disorderly than the world itself is. A wild mind is a balanced mind. The wild world may be deeper and more heterogeneous than the city world, but the difference is only a matter of degree. The sense of wilderness is our birthright, and we can experience it anywhere. "The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning," Snyder writes. "One should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience . . . to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight." The real goal, he says, is to see all the land around us, whether in the country or in the city, as "part of the same territory—never totally ruined, never completely unnatural." 

Of course there is still absolutely nothing like a face-to-face encounter with deep wilderness. Once at Buck Lake, I was awakened by the screaming call of a pack of coyotes racing unseen through the 3 A.M. darkness, the shrill sound moving fast along the mighty granite ridge across from my campsite, then fading into the distance. That sound still rings in my memory, a quicksilver affirmation of the strangeness and holiness of the world.

The language and sentiments are clearly religious. But there is no theology, no theos at all. It suits the "spiritual-but-not-religious" mindset, whose sprituality is affective and natural, not burdened by over-thought (yet underbaked) theology and relic supernaturalism. Science isn't a problem here, but another way to appreciate the glory of what we love on so many levels- our world and biosphere.

Is all this good? People are naturally religious, creating and needing frames of meaning beyond mere subsistence and reproduction. The Republican Party and current administration shows what can happen when such a frame becomes completely moribund, paying lip service to Catholic and generally Christian dogmas while throwing any semblence of actual moral principle to the wind and practicing shameless greed. It is a revolting spectacle on every level. True religion fosters empathy and puts us in touch with our core values and commonality, not just among males, or with fellow countrymen, or even with humans, but with all beings.

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Not the Last Dark Age- the One Before That

Review of 1177 B.C., by Eric Cline, about the decline and fall of the Bronze age around the Eastern Mediterranean

In this time of cultural and political decline, it is useful to contemplate previous cultural cataclysms. While "the Dark Ages" typically denotes the roughly five hundred year hiatus between the fall of Rome and the resurgence of wider cultural ties and development in Western Europe, that was hardly the only extended collapse of high level civilization. A previous Dark Age had followed the collapse of the Bronze Age circa 1200 BCE, leading to the several historically empty centuries before we hear about the classical Greek civilization rising from the ashes in the 700s BCE.

The Greeks cherished their dramatic sagas dating from that prior, heroic epoch, much as the English later looked backwards romantically via the Arthurian saga, going do far as to send Arthur to defeat the Romans in battle. But the battle of Troy was no fantasy- it really happened. The only question is whether it was part of the destruction of the Bronze age, or part of its normal, competitive, affairs.

In fact, it is astonishing what we do know about this age, given its distance from us and the ensuing civilizations. Eric Cline has assembled an excellent guide to this period, the late Bronze age, dredging up a great deal of scholarship old and new on the many civilizations clustered around the Eastern Mediterranean from Italy to Egypt. We owe particular debts to the writing developed earlier in this age, both the hieroglyphic style in Egypt, and the cuneiform style from Babylon, which was adopted by the Hittites and others. The clay tablets so amenable to preservation (especially after fires) have been a gold mine of knowledge about the affairs and attitudes of the time.

Hittite writing from about 3300 years ago, using cuneiform script.

We have correspondence between kings as well as more mundane accounts. We have in some cases both sides of a diplomatic exchange, even a momentous peace treaty between Egypt and the Hittite empire. It is quite amazing. These unearthed records paint a picture of extensive contacts and trade between the states of Cyprus (Minoans), the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece, the Hittites of Anatolia, the Assyrians, the Ugaritic state in what is now the northern Syrian coast, the Canaanites, and Egypt. It is easy to get carried away with globalization analogies and complexity theory. But unfortunately, we have very little to go on when it comes to what ended this period. The Egyptians record enormous battles with "the Sea Peoples", which seems to have been a coalition of several enemies. But they also say they won this war, and the pharoah, Ramses III, was laid to rest in high style, though murdered in an internecine plot. Cline goes through a large amount of archealogical evidence, which shows earthquakes, drought and climate change, internal revolt as well as external invasions during these times. It is, in sum, hard to finger any single cause for the eventual decline of all these cultures into several hundred years of relative silence and decreptitude, (not to mention tomb-robbing), though there may have been a combination.

It was once fashionable to cite the Sea People as the instigators, in an orgy of rapine and destruction, as is related in the Iliad, and the Egyptian annals. It is not clear who the Sea Peoples were, however. They may have been Myceneans, but evidently encompassed other groups as well, maybe even free-booting pirates. And the various destroyed cities of this age were not all invaded, let alone by these groups. The Hittites were sacked by other enemies.

Ramses III mortuary relief showing prisoners from battles with the "Sea Peoples". Note the diverse head-dresses.

Cline resorts to the decline of trade, and complexity theory in his speculations. But a problem is that, despite the excitement of finding trade relations between these states, and royal correspondence, it is highly unlikely that a state like Egypt was substantially dependent on outside trade or other assistance. Such relations were icing on the cake, but hardly fundamental to its perpetuation. The cause has to be found elsewhere, either in general theories of cultural sclerosis and decline, or perhaps in disease or technological innovation. Also, if invasions or revolts were at issue, why did some other state not take advantage of them? The preceding centuries had seen a constant tug-of war between Egypt and the Hittites for control up the Levant, indicating that, were one weakened, others would rush to take up the slack. Yet both went into decline, and the Hittites vanished completely. It may indeed just be a coincidence that many cultures had reached a high level simultaneously, and then at similar times were overcome by ruder powers less inclined to leave historical traces.

The stage of the Bronze age was originally set by the migration of Indoeuropean peoples into the Middle East, founding the Mycenean and Hittite cultures, among others. Their earlier spread was enabled by a suite of decisive technological innovations like horse riding, wheeled carts and chariots, mobile warfare, and herding, which enabled mobility and military success. By the late Bronze age, these were no longer novel and had diffused all over the region. But perhaps some other innovation, like improved and larger ships or nascent iron working, may have tipped a critical balance. Secondly, herding and livestock domestication generated a variety of new diseases, which eventually played such a large role in the destruction of the native peoples of the New World. Perhaps one of these diseases had yet to burn its way through the late Bronze age Mediterranean. It must be said, however, that such an event would probably show up in the Egyptian annals, and also that other cultures managed to recover within a generation or two from devastating plagues, such as the black plague.

Lastly, cultural decline might be inevitable after a long period of stability. Stability breeds complacency and a cultural dynamic where the powerful stay powerful, with ever less merit and justification as time goes on. Their corruption, combined with the resentment of the powerless, can lead morons into power, a bad sign in any age and a sure path to decline, for all their protestations of greatness.

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What Adulthood Looks Like in the Brain

A gene expression turning point in the mid-20's correlates with onset of schizophrenia, among other things.

Are brains magic? No. They may be magic-al in how they bring us the world in living color, but it is mechanism all the way down, as can be seen from the countless ailments that attack the brain and its functions, such as the dramatic degradation that happens in boxers and football players who have been through excessive trauma. All that amazing function relies on highly complex mechanisms, but we are only beginning to understand them.

One way to look at the brain is through its components, the proteins expressed from our genomes. Those proteins run everything, from the structural building program to the brain's metabolism and exquisitely tuned ion balances. Current technology in molecular biology allows researchers to tabulate the expression of all genes in any tissue, such as the brain or parts thereof. This is sort of like getting a quantitative parts list for all the vehicles active in one city at a particular time. It might tell you a little about the balance between mass transit and personal cars, and perhaps about brand preferences and wealth in the city, but it would be hard to conclude much about detailed activity patterns or traffic issues, much less the trajectories or motivations of the individual cars- why they are going where they are going.

So, while very high-tech and big-data, this kind of view is still crude. A recent paper deployed these methods to look at gene expression in the brain over time, in humans and mice, to find global patterns of change with age, and attempt to correlate them with diseases that are known to have striking age-related characteristics, like schizophrenia.

They duly found changes of gene expression over time, and tried to concentrate on genes that exhibit dramatic changes, reversing course over time, or plateauing at times that they call turning points. Below are a few genes that show a dramatic decline in mice, from youth to adolescence.

Expression of selected proteins in frontal cortex of mice, with age, showing turning points in early adulthood, which is about five months here in mice. These genes each have variants or other known associations with schizophrenia.

Perhaps the most interesting result was that, if they tabulate all the cases of turning points, most seem to occur at early adulthood. The graphs below show rates of genes with turning points at various age points. One can see that by about age 30 and certainly 40, (about age 7 months in mice), the brain is set in stone, gene-wise. There is little further change in gene expression.

Number of genes by age when their expression shifts direction, either up, down, or plateauing.

In contrast, age 15 to 30 is a very active time, with the most genes changing direction, and the largest changes of expression peaking about age 28. Given the many genes and complex patterns available, the authors reasoned that they could do some reverse engineering, predicting a sample's age from its expression pattern. And using only 100 genes, they show that they can reliably estimate the age of the source, within about 5 years. Secondly, they broke the gene sets down by the cell type where they are expressed, and found distinct patterns, like genes typical of endothelial cells attaining peaks of expression very early, before 10 years of age, as physical growth of the brain is maximal, while genes typical of pyramidal neurons, one of the most important and complex types of neurons, reach their inflection points much later, in the mid-twenties.

Types of genes and their rough times of expression shift, by age. Most key neuronal genes seem to settle into unchanging patterns in early adulthood. PSD is post-synaptic density, typical of synapses where learning takes place.

Particularly interesting to the authors are genes associated with post-synaptic density, part of the learning and plasticity system where connections between neurons are managed. These genes were especially enriched with turning points in early adulthood, and also feature a disproportionate number of genes implicated in schizophrenia, whose onset occurs around this time. The genes tended to be turned down at this time, in neurons. While these observations correlate with the age-specific nature of schizophrenia, they do not go much farther, unless it could be shown that the genetic variants that confer susceptibility are perhaps mal-regulated and more active than they are supposed to be, or some other mechanism that makes the connection between the defect (all of which so far which have very weak effects), and the outcome. For example, one such variation was found to increase expression of its gene, which is present and functional in the post-synaptic densities.

It is interesting to see the developmental program of our brains portrayed in this new way, but it is only a glimpse into issues that require far more detailed investigation.

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Vegas

A brief post.

Since no ideological, political, or religious motive has yet emerged for the massacre in Vegas, I would tend to interpret it as a terminal case of gun nuttery. We have long heard how violent video games and movies were supposed to be damaging our brains. Well, I think gun fetishization is an even stronger deranging influence. One can read it in the gun blogs, where a discourse of fear and power, of tactical preparedness and no retreat turn into a machismo echo chamber. And actually owning guns seems to have similar effects, turning owners minds to the power they wield, somehow generating the need for more and more, and more elaborate fantasies of what to do with them. Apparently 3% of gun owners own half the guns in the US. It is a disease, is culpable, and should be in the DSM.

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Father Dearest

Toxicities, perversions and archetypes around the father role. Based on Raised Right by Jeffrey Dudas, and Toxic Parents, by Susan Forward.

The father archetype looms large over our personal and collective lives. Fathers are inescapable, for better or worse, in their shaping of our identity, meaning, and purpose. Most cultures, including all those of Indo-European descent, are patriarchial. Father figures are central to our political lives and mythology. God is a father.

Our current political divide is steeped in the father archetype. Democrats are the mommy party, Republicans the daddy party. Never has that been clearer than with the current occupant of the White House, who seems to think that his orange patriarchial aura should suffice to get the entire country to fall in line behind every tweeted emission. But it is nothing to make light of- the psychology of these polar tendencies is fundamental to humanity and probably many other beings. Perpetual contrasts exist between competition and cooperation, risk and security, discipline and forgiveness, war and love, yang and yin.

A recent book about icons of the right argues that father mythology pervades the personal and political conceptions of the right. Fathers only have authority in the family if the state moderates its nanny-ish tendencies. CEOs only have proper authority if the state does not meddle in their companies. And the country is properly run only when a father figure lays down the law on standards of morality and behavior, however much that conflicts with the first two aims. Many prominent figures on the right have frought, to say the least, relations with their own fathers. Newt Gingrich comes to mind, but the author Jeffrey Dudas profiles William Buckley (absent, though overbearing, father), Ronald Reagan (drunk, weak father), and Clarence Thomas (deserted father, replaced by totalitarian grandfather). Each found a personal and political mythology in constructing a new image of the father figure, mostly drawn on the founding fathers.

It is the usual authoritarian / patriarchal story- what ails the world (read- the self, or the early self) is lack of discipline, and masculine modeling, which is supplied by the authoritarian leader who will restore order, law, and the scope for other elements of the patriarchy down the line (corporate, police-state, and family) to do likewise, will heal the society. This resolves the chaos resulting from lack of boundaries and discipline, and lack of social hierarchy. All this is claimed in the name of freedom- the true freedom of the orderly citizen, not that of the malcontent and rabble-rouser. Reagan provided an especially clear vision of this condition of the state, set in contrast to the hippie protesters on whom he cut his teeth as governor of California. And he justified it in terms of the American dream of freedom and equal opportunity for all- all virtuous and deserving citizens, that is.

All is well with this nuclear family, enjoying its driverless car in 1957.  Each person's role is well-defined and secure.

The problem is that, while the patriarchial virtues certainly have merit, they are hardly the only virtues. Worse, they tend to paper over a great deal of presumption about the fairness of the current starting conditions, and the ability of its stated virtues to afford the promised success, not to mention the sterling virtues and talents of those currently at the top of the heap. That is why Horatio Alger stories are such a staple of the right. If Clarence Thomas can make it, or Steve Jobs, or Jack Kemp, or .. fill in the blank... then anyone can, with enough gumption.

That is, however, a sucker's game, as likely to raise up the masses as is the local Indian Casino. Not only should success or even a decent life not depend on such extraordinary efforts and talents, but it clearly does not for the well-to-do, who bequeath countless social, material, and political advantages on their offspring, resulting in the remarkable lack of social and wealth mobility that we see in the US today. The starting blocks are starkly different for different people, and it is absurd to preach individual morality tales when material and other forms of inequality are so tragically and obviously responsible for the lack of freedom and prosperity for most citizens. Where are the reparations for slavery, for example? Also missing is any model or justification for communal, public goods. Life becomes a competition of atomized individuals, with family structure and discipline separating the wheat from the chaff, but without a rationale for wider social cooperation and institutions, such as public schools or anti-corruption mechanisms in government, or business regulation, that render the level playing field which the patriarchial myth assumes and depends on, but refuses to address.

Which is not to say that personal virtues, just saying no, stick-to-it-ive-ness, discipline, and the like, are not good things. The wise and benevolent father figure is also a very good thing. Yet, as Susan Forward points out, toxic, abusive, and even incestuous, parents are all too common. One in ten families, by her estimation, experience incest. It is shocking and horrifying, yet preaching from on high is not going to help, particularly as the perpetrators are often the very ones, through the magically empowering nature of the archetype, doing the hypocritical preaching.

Indeed, it is the damaged children who seem to end up on the right, latching on to the one certainty they have learned, that their own efforts avail them something in the rough-and-tumble of life. Desperate for good parenting, they seek father figures and a father mythology that will heal. And one is naturally ready to hand, in the patriarchy, the founding fathers, orginalism. Virtually every religion furnishes the same tale- a father who is both loving and strict, giving commandments and boundaries with one hand, while providing hope of temporal and supernatural power with the other. Most people don't take it too seriously, but if the need is intense enough, if the child within is damaged enough, this patriarchal solution seems to become a template for everything- how to live one's own life, and how the nation should be run as well.

As Dudas writes:

"Not exclusive to modern American conservatism, this longing for stability, for an end to what Willam Connolly calls the 'homesickness' of the human condition, is a hallmark of modern living. Modern times, Connolly argues, are defined by the widespread loss of belief in transcendent purpose (in 'myth') and, accordingly, by an eruption of nihilism. But this nihilism, and the felt loss of meaning that accompanies it, (of Kristeva's 'melancholia'), is so upsetting that it has been the subject of an astonishing range of ameliorative attempts. Hence the feverish devotion to those human projects that attempt to establish the sorts of 'antimyths' that Fitzpatrick locates at the heart of modernity: projects of science, reason, and the state, for example, with which human life might be organized and infused with the noncontingent foundations that existed before (to paraphrase Nietzsche) humans killed off God.
...
But as with all other modern attempts to forestall nihilism, it turns out that the melancholic's desire is 'impossible'. ... The desire for the stable object is impossible and magical because the object (Father) is oversaturated with meaning; it is itself a floating signifier that is purposed and repurposed according to the endless demands of desire rather than to the rigors of logic or intellectual coherence."

Our current president is a damaged child, from a totalitarian father, who reproduces the same parenting style with his own children, and now towards the rest of us as well. Add in desperate narcissim, and the result appears to be pathological lying and manipulativeness, as well as complete blindness to the perspectives of those not on his favorite cable news channels. We have all become victims of bad parenting, and need to redouble our efforts to break the cycle.

• Back when the government ran finance, not Wall Street.
• Too many old savers leads to persistent low interest rates and inflation.
• The market is quite high.
• North Korea has very effective deterrence.
• The rich are still getting richer.
• Getting a PhD is not so great for your job prospects.
• Annals of feudalism, cont... workers are about to be stripped of legal recourse for abuse.
• Economic graph of the week. Robbing the poor to give to the rich, under the proposed tax "plan".

Who pays what under the new plan?